Tarl has no difficulty gaining admittance to the Beetle’s lair, where he soon finds Vika’s unmoving body, her eyes staring fixedly into space, her body still warm but with no heartbeat. He is sorry for her horrible death, though he cannot tell what she has died of, and he bids her a sad farewell and sees about his own escape. Still, certain questions nag at him, such as how long she has been in the tunnels and what she could possibly have eaten, and finally the penny drops and he realizes what Misk meant about the time of hatching.

He hurries back to the Beetle’s lair where he pries a series of small bumps out from under her skin, finding them to be what he expected: Golden Beetle eggs, about to hatch; and once he has extracted these he finds that Vika now has enough breath to fog a mirror, or the blade of his sword in this case. Clearly the eggs themselves induce catatonia.

Chapter Twenty-Four

There are certain dramatic conventions that must be observed in cases like these. In this instance, no sooner have the eggs been destroyed than Tarl has an irate parent to deal with. The monster makes its entrance and proves to be a giant of an insect, a stocky creature the size of a rhinoceros. It is indeed golden in colour and has a kind of a mane (pay attention, this is no mere irrelevant detail) and does not know quite what to make of Tarl. However, once it has found out what has become of its eggs, it quickly decides that “tiny little bite-sized chunks” would answer that question quite handily, and it sets off in slow but dogged pursuit.

Tarl can’t help wondering how the Beetle, powerful as it is, can ever catch and kill a Priest-King, for he has seen Sarm’s speed and Misk’s strength amply demonstrated. Still, outrunning the Beetle is no easy task for Tarl, burdened as he is by a comatose Vika, and eventually he succumbs to weariness and finds himself dozing. Fortunately, his warrior reflexes don’t let him down and he comes around just as the Beetle is poised for the kill, its sticky mane exuding a soporific scent that almost succeeded in rendering Tarl helpless.

Chapter Twenty-Five

Thus for the terrified flight and the last-moment awakening; now it’s a straightforward fight between Tarl and the monster, whose importance to the plot is certainly not great as Tarl disposes of it in less than one page. He forces its biting mandibles off his body, breaks them, and stabs the creature to death, heedless of Misk’s warning that it is a great crime to kill a Golden Beetle. He leaves the creature’s body to be disposed of by a Slime Worm and makes his way back to the tunnel entrance, merrily toting Vika who by now is well on the road to recovery although still unconscious.

He knows it is no use to return to the door by which he was admitted, as he will not be allowed out; it is guarded by Muls and he has no chance of convincing them to disobey any order given them by a Priest-King. But it’s at times like these that the intrepid hero finds himself a ventilation duct, and Tarl implement this stock plan with absolute success. True, he has an electrified grille to pass, and true, he still has to carry Vika who is making no contribution whatever to the proceedings, but no-one seriously expects such obstacles to stymie our Tarl, does he? And so it proves.

Once clear of the Beetle’s tunnels, Tarl finds himself in a zoo where there are many specimen cages, and this fits in with his plans, although what those plans are Tarl doesn’t yet tell the reader. He concentrates on reviving Vika, which he manages, and she, knowing the law and custom when a man has rescued her from certain death, submits herself to Tarl and declares her love for him.

Chapter Twenty-Six

Tarl has no intention of trusting Vika however much she may claim to be helplessly in love with him, and instead he finds the zookeeper and has a cage prepared for her, presenting her as breeding stock newly brought from outside the Nest. His aim is twofold: to keep Vika safe and fed, and to ensure that she cannot betray him. The prospect of being caged does not appeal to Vika one little bit and she tries quite a repertoire of female wiles to convince Tarl not to lock her away, but in the end he proves strong-willed enough to go through with it and, surprise surprise, this total subjugation to his will turns out to be exactly what Vika really wanted all along.

This is the cue for a digression on the true natures of men and women, the male instinct to dominate and the female to submit, and Norman’s usual fare in the way of evolutionary sexual selection. Tarl philosophises somewhat further in this vein than he has to date – his last effort on this topic was back in volume 2 when he was discussing how woman-dominated Tharna got to be the way it then was – but he will go a good deal further before he is done. As sermons go this is a short one, barely over three hundred words and devoid of the run-on sentences that will become a trademark; but it does mark something of an attitude shift in Tarl, who up to now has rather rejected slavery and all it stands for.

Leaving Vika securely caged, and with the keeper’s assurance that she will be well fed and watered, Tarl goes to find out what it means to give Gur to the Mother.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Tarl sees to his own victualling and gets himself a change of clothes, and eventually finds his way to the chamber of the Mother. Of course he is not allowed in but he soon finds a back way, whence he can watch as drama unfolds.

The Mother is a great bloated specimen like a queen ant, but in this case an immensely huge and inconceivably ancient queen ant. She is the centrepiece of the Feast of Tola, at which one Priest-King after another brings her a drop of Gur, until finally Sarm and Misk enter in state. They are the only two survivors of the First Five Born and come last in the ceremony to complete the giving of Gur, and although Sarm certainly wasn’t expecting Misk to turn up this year, neither of them is willing to mar the ceremony by making a quarrel over recent events. But Sarm gets a shock when he brings his offering and is refused.

This is a moment of high drama and it is apparent from the reaction of the other Priest-Kings that something is badly wrong. It’s also a cue for a fight between Sarm and Misk, in which Sarm’s tremendous speed nets him an early lead. Misk is resourceful however and manages to sucker Sarm in coming to grips, where his greater strength prevails. Sarm promptly cries uncle – and the minute Misk’s back is turned he bops him over the head with his translator device, which is heavy enough to make an effective weapon. Ignoring the Mother’s objections, Sarm is all set to bite Misk’s head off when Tarl crashes the party.

The Mother overrules the protests of the congregation, but Sarm is determined to kill both Tarl and Misk. Unfortunately he is a great one for risk avoidance and despite having all the odds on his side he hasn’t the bottle to kill Tarl without the aid of a “silver tube”, and earns himself derision when he calls for one. Trying to cover his tracks by pretending it was a joke, Sarm pounces on Tarl and finds him prepared for the attack. Sarm sustains a wound to his foreleg and at this point Misk recovers consciousness and tells Sarm to scram. Sarm goes, vowing to return with some serious ordnance.

Before he returns however Tarl has time for a chat with the Mother, who is very near to death and recalls her mating flight and “he with wings like showers of gold”. She confesses her sin to Tarl: how she would not give way to a new Mother and listened to Sarm who wanted to be the only First Born; but she reveals that there is a female egg hidden somewhere on Gor. She bids Tarl give her Gur and tells him to go to the Wagon Peoples… and before she can say any more of what she means, she rises to her feet one last time and exclaims (it seems that way to me, though of course the Priest-King translators render it in the usual quiet, expressionless fashion):